Living Fossils
Here at Cornell we always take seriously whatever the establishment tells us. If they tell us evolution is true, we can’t help but believe it. If they tell us it is well supported by the evidence, we figure they must be right, even if it appears someone has gone and hidden that evidence in a top secret bunker in some undisclosed location, far away from where lowly undergrads like us could verify it. And if they tell us that the fossil record is comprehensive enough to serve as a good, relatively complete record of evolutionary progress, that they can be reasonably sure about the life spans of various species, the proposed relationships between them, and the absolute dating involved– well, they must be right.
That’s why new developments like the recent discovery of a member of the 11-million year extinct Diatomyidae– a small rodent like creature– or the reptilian tuatara– extinct since the times of the dinosaurs– don’t make us stop and think. It’s only creationists who might be inclined to go into uncomfortable questions, and wonder if perhaps some paleontologists have been a bit bold in their claims, are working too hard to fit things into an already-prepared paradigm. We prefer to trust people who say they know better than us.
Still, if we were willing to question things, and thought that maybe new evidence might someday cause us to rethink our view of the world, perhaps articles such as this one from Science might catch our interest.
A caveat, per some of our discussions… even if we were open minded, we wouldn’t think this was a pre-cambrian rabbit :).
Comment by Freawaru — March 12, 2006 @ 12:07 am
Pretty interesting!
Comment by Wulfgar — March 12, 2006 @ 8:36 pm
I’m interested in both Evolution and Psychology and I think a couple of quotes from Einstein may give a clue as to why we are less questioning than might otherwise be the case:
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education”
and
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education”
Comment by John Latter — March 12, 2006 @ 10:36 pm